


Homecomings and Leavetakings

by roguefaerie



Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore
Genre: F/M, Ficlet, Nature, Nature Magic, Trick or Treat 2019, Trick or Treat: Treat, Underworld, Weather
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2020-10-25 14:28:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20725709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roguefaerie/pseuds/roguefaerie
Summary: Persephone considers the home she has built, and the places that she walks.





	Homecomings and Leavetakings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AceQueenKing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceQueenKing/gifts).

At the end of the year Persephone thinks of it: her mother is bright skies and flowers to match, and her husband is the hush of that beneath darkened soil. Her husband is he who guards all who come to rest, at an end, and after a time where the living walk there is a part of her that craves the restful darkness. Below the earth she has made a home where her mother will not dwell, and is that not what all people crave in the end? She can return to it when the time comes and have her own respite.

She thinks now of the times she has wanted her husband, in the land below the land. Life continues even as the world quiets itself, but Persephone and Hades are two who roam among the dead with ease.

There are so few who do not die. In the end she meets so many and it is with them that she builds a quiet and sometimes solemn home beside Zeus’ brother. The shades of her dwelling place befit the darkness, a place of silence and rest, and the knowledge of lives well lived.

She walks among the cobwebs and breathes easy, her life strewn with souls. And yet she remembers it is her mother who asks for her presence each year, as the sun climbs higher and the buds begin to push through soil. As she ages she comes to know that she often craves her place beside her husband even as the sun beats down and nourishes the mortal world.

She finds herself craving the light just as well when the time is right, like so many plants in her mother’s world. She goes, with a parting kiss to her husband’s lips, and finds herself leaving home for yet another one, once more with his love in her heart and her gaze pointed to the sun. Yet she knows that beneath the earth she and Hades can lie together and build a force so strong that it makes the very earth turn, and she loves him all the more.


End file.
